Carroll school board members who work as substitute teachers to get a close-up view of the classroom don?t get paid to do so.
Neither should county commissioners, Carroll?s school ethics board says.
The board reaffirmed that view when it found no problem with Carroll school board member Jeffrey Morse?s working as a substitute without pay.
The finding came after a county ethics board?s opinion that Commissioner Michael Zimmer return $170 he earned from two substitute teaching assignments late last year. He refused.
School board members are typically barred from working in the school system for pay until several years after leaving the board, said Laura Rhodes, who has resisted applying to be a substitute teacher since resigning from the board in 2005.
Morse, a Taneytown resident and Littlestown, Pa., high school science teacher, proposed last summer that Carroll administrators work as substitute teachers.
That prompted Barry Potts, head of Carroll?s teachers union, to challenge school board members to lead a class.
Zimmer, the commissioners? liaison to the Board of Education, accepted. At multiple public meetings, he announced his plans to substitute.
The county ethics board, which is separate from the school system?s ethics board, said in a letter to county staff that Zimmer held “dual employment” by accepting the money.
But Morse knew when he decided to be a substitute teacher that he would not get paid and checked with the school ethics board to make sure he could teach for free.
“I knew full well that it would be unethical for me to be paid, so therefore I never asked,” Morse said.
Zimmer agreed to remove his name from the substitute teaching list but said it would be unfair to him and other teachers if he were not paid.
Morse, however, hoped the commissioner would volunteer to teach so he could better understand how difficult it is to teach overcrowded classes with as many as 35 students.
“It is fabulous that Commissioner Zimmer subbed, and I hope he would continue doing it ? just without pay,” Morse said. “The pay issue is a little bit of a sticky wicket.”
